One guy, a pair of skis and one AR.Drone 2.0 heading for the South Pole

Antony Jinman is currently skiing to the South Pole with his Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 + GPS Flight Recorder!

At Parrot, we are thrilled to support Antony Jinman in this amazing expedition.This is the first time ever a toy is flying over the South Pole!
Such an expedition requires not only months of preparation but also a comprehensive equipment including our AR.Drone 2.0 + GPS Flight Recorder, as detailed in this article of Antony’s Blog

This is the first photography of Antony starring our AR.Drone 2.0 transmitted via Iridium data connection!
He’ve now covered over 100 miles of his 730 miles trek to the South Pole, he is now at about 800m above sea level and still walking in the cold (-10°C today).

- Where is Antony exactly now?
He is Lat -81.224600 Long -079.991566
He has just broke the 100 mile (109 miles exactly) stage and has 630 miles to go.

- How many days left to reach the South Pole?
Today is Day 12 on the ice and his strategy is to reach the South Pole in a total of 50 days, this is the allowance of food and fuel that he has. He is using this as a target so that he has a few days either side to allow for flexibility.

- How was the drone photo transmitted, via Iridum data connection?
He has a coms system made up of a laptop, Iridum data connection (phone and modem) and solar panels to keep it all charged. This means that he has an allowance of power to achieve his daily communications and an allowance of bandwidth with which to transmit. Therefore he can receive emails without attachments and sending and receiving pics has to be a planned exercise and carefully executed. Communication to Antony goes through one person and via one email address and we control communication effectively to ensure that he gets a distilled account of children’s comments, letters and questions, once a day. He then responds through one short voice message to Ipadio.

We wish all the luck in the world to Anthony in the coming days and sincerely hope he will reach his final objective, i.e. the South Pole.
You can track his adventure here and stay tuned on Facebook Parrot!